Flood insurance: get back to work

Published: Friday, October 18, 2013 at 09:00 PM.

Coastal erosion and flood protection are two pressing, persistent challenges that shape the quality of life in Eastern North Carolina.

An even more pressing problem, though, has slowly come into this region’s consciousness, and it is a problem that could pose a bigger threat to our continued ability to call this area home.

The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which was signed into law last year, contains a number of changes to the federal flood insurance program that could — if imposed as planned — strip many of our homes and businesses of their value.

The changes are extreme and affect the prices and conditions of our flood insurance, which many of us must carry and all of us should carry to protect our investments.

If you live in a flood zone, you are required to carry flood insurance as part of your mortgage agreement. So any dramatic increase in insurance cost will affect you. It will also affect your property values since any potential buyer will be affected by the higher rates.

The new law does away with grandfathering insurance policies at their current costs, which would mean that increased prices would kick in for current policyholders — even if they have paid their bills for years or decades.

It also requires updated flood elevation maps — a point that has caused much disagreement. Many flood control measures and structures have been discounted because they don’t satisfy new federal guidelines.

Coastal erosion and flood protection are two pressing, persistent challenges that shape the quality of life in Eastern North Carolina.

An even more pressing problem, though, has slowly come into this region’s consciousness, and it is a problem that could pose a bigger threat to our continued ability to call this area home.

The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which was signed into law last year, contains a number of changes to the federal flood insurance program that could — if imposed as planned — strip many of our homes and businesses of their value.

The changes are extreme and affect the prices and conditions of our flood insurance, which many of us must carry and all of us should carry to protect our investments.

If you live in a flood zone, you are required to carry flood insurance as part of your mortgage agreement. So any dramatic increase in insurance cost will affect you. It will also affect your property values since any potential buyer will be affected by the higher rates.

The new law does away with grandfathering insurance policies at their current costs, which would mean that increased prices would kick in for current policyholders — even if they have paid their bills for years or decades.

It also requires updated flood elevation maps — a point that has caused much disagreement. Many flood control measures and structures have been discounted because they don’t satisfy new federal guidelines.

The federal changes are meant to control the cost of the flood insurance program, an understandable goal.

But if they go into effect and force the people who need the program the most out of it, they will defeat the purpose of the program.

It is great to see a bipartisan attempt to delay the changes and lessen their impact on coastal residents.

Let us hope they succeed in convincing their colleagues that the human impact of these changes would be catastrophic.

At least one state, Louisiana, is planning to file suit to delay or block the changes, claiming that they would amount to an illegal taking of residents’ property values.

The goal of making the flood insurance program self-sustaining is noble, particularly in these times of continuing economic difficulties in Washington. But it cannot do so at the expense of the people who need flood insurance — the very reason the program exists in the first place.

With any luck, there will be a congressional solution. At this point, that seems far more likely than finding success in the federal court system.

A version of this editorial first appeared in the Thibodaux Daily Comet, a Halifax Media Group newspaper in Louisiana.